


How Loud Your Heart

by goldheartedsky



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, I take liberties with the ending, Joe Al-Kaysani Needs A Hug, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Andy | Andromache of Scythia Friendship, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova are in Love, Let the poor man cry, M/M, Nicky’s Dead and Everything Hurts, Playing with the effects of immortality, Somewhat, Temporary Character Death, They’ve both been through a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:35:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26415028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldheartedsky/pseuds/goldheartedsky
Summary: Joe doesn’t see the shot, but he can hear it.Can hear Nicky’s frightened gasp around the barrel of a gun, can hear the crack of a bullet on bone and the thud of Nicky’s body hitting the floor.They’ve died a thousand times but this time is different. This time, Nicky doesn’t wake up.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quyhn | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 62
Kudos: 460





	How Loud Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Back at it again with another sad TOG fic. The next one will be happier, I swear!

* * *

Joe doesn’t see the shot, but he can hear it.

Can hear Nicky’s frightened gasp around the barrel of a gun, can hear the crack of a bullet on bone and the thud of Nicky’s body hitting the floor. The gas is blinding but that has never stopped him. He could find his love in a storm, in the dark, in death itself. Joe coughs, lungs stinging as he chokes out, “Nicolò…”

The rubble bites at his palms and knees as he crawls, repeating Nicky’s name. The younger man’s eyes are half-lidded, glassy and pale and lifeless as Joe cradles his blood soaked crown. Seconds creep by like stretched-out lifetimes and he blinks, face pinching in confusion. It doesn’t take this long. He coughs again, knees slipping in the copper pool of blood. It’s still warm and Nicky’s skin is losing heat and it doesn’t take this long.

“Nicolò, _destati_ ,” he begs and his voice sounds strangled with worry. After Andy, they’re all on high alert. But this is different. It never takes this long. There’s no twitch of muscles, no crackling of growing bone and sinew to reassure Joe that his beloved is healing. There’s no noise at all.

His heart rabbits in his chest, threatening to break through his tender sternum. How long has it been? How long did the last time take? Joe remembers falling, remembers dying, remembers Nicky pushing himself up far before the last bullet had fallen from his skull.

But this is different. Nicky’s eyes stare blankly into the vast beyond and suddenly Joe can’t breathe. He grabs at the other man’s shirt, his hands, his arms—pulls him up and out of the slick mess. His vision burns and blurs as Nicky’s head falls forward with a sickening crack, blood trickling out the corner of his mouth from where it had pooled. Some noise falls out of Joe’s mouth but his ears are ringing too loud to tell if it’s some tortured version of Nicky’s name or a horrified scream.

This can’t be happening.

This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening. He holds Nicky’s head to his chest, fingers holding the still-dripping hole in the back of the man’s head, and rocks him carefully. He’s so afraid he’ll hurt him further. This can’t be happening, it doesn’t take this long. Joe is shaking, too numb, too stunned to cry, too shocked to do anything but pant Nicky’s name over and over again. “Nicolò, Nicolò, _please_. Come back, Nicolo, come back!” hekeens and pets his beloved Nicky’s hair back out of his face. “Come _back_!”

Yet still, minutes after that first shot rang out, Nicky is still gone. There’s gunfire in a far off stairwell and Joe’s head spins. His team needs him. His family needs him.

A sob rips out of his throat as he folds over Nicky’s body, leaving his throat bloody and raw. “I will not leave you here,” Joe weeps into the other man’s still chest. “I will come back for you, my heart.”

The room closes around him as he stands on crumbling legs. There’s no strength left in him—barely enough to drag Nicky to a safe corner of the hallway. Joe reaches down with timorous hands and closes those perfect slate-blue eyes, pressing a kiss to each of Nicky’s dark eyelids. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. Maybe the gas has gone to his head and it’s all been a hallucination.

Maybe he’s dead and his worst nightmare has come true.

There are bodies and he’s fighting, more bodies and there’s shooting, more bodies and Nicky is gone. Joe bites the inside of his cheek raw and sucks blood through clenched teeth just to keep from screaming. Another body drops to the floor and the magazine is empty and his Nicky is _gone_.

He turns a corner and careens to a halt as his name is called. “Joe?” It’s Nile, but Joe’s vision blurs too far to see her. He clutches his stomach, his other hand fumbling for the railing in the glass skyway, and a pained wail escapes him like a dying animal.

“Where’s Nicky?” It’s Andy this time, forceful as always, and he shakes his head. His stomach creeps up his throat in a relentless march. “Joe, where’s Nicky?”

There must be some immeasurable grief stitched so deeply into his face that makes what happened undeniable. Joe shakes his head again and the world turns on a tilt. He’s got nothing, not without Nicky. He wipes his face, sweat and tears clinging to the skin of his wrists and sees Andy’s face first. She knows. He doesn’t even have to say it; she knows.

She has felt this darkness firsthand.

Nile’s face falls with confusion. “Andy, what’s going—” And then her voice fails her when she realizes what she’s saying. She’s young and, while she is a soldier, Joe doesn’t even know if she’s lost someone in this way. Her voice is quiet and truly wrecked as she whispers, “Oh no.”

“If Andy and Nicky have lost their immortality, what does that mean for us?” Booker asks and Joe is seconds away from wrapping fingers around that man’s throat for daring to sound hopeful at the thought.

Joe bares his teeth and his white-hot rage eclipses his grief for the briefest of moments. “It means I am going to kill Keane, Merrick, and then you, Booker, for your part in all of this,” he growls. “And then I am going to follow my Nicolò.” The other man takes a wary step back and he should be scared. Joe would burn the entire earth to ashes to have Nicky smile at him again.

~~~

Killing Keane gives him no satisfaction.

Not even when he watches the life drain out of the man’s eyes, Joe’s fingers so tight around his throat that he can feel the guard’s vertebrae snap. All he can think of is Nicky’s grey eyes sinking back into his pale face. Nile is the one that pulls him off, long after Keane is gone, and Joe screams to be freed. He will never be appeased until every piece of that bastard is shredded and torn apart.

Killing Merrick gives him even less restitution.

The man cries, begs for his life when Joe puts the first bullet in his knee. Booker looks sick and Andy turns away as he puts the next one just above Merrick’s hip. Hits a kidney maybe. Joe sees in visions of red and black as he digs his heel into the pulsing wound, heart and head pounding with the CEO’s screams. “You killed Nicky,” he spits, tossing the empty gun on the floor and taking Nicky’s longsword from Andy’s outstretched hand.

“I didn’t kill him,” Merrick pleads, “that was Keane. You’ve already gotten him, now—”

His voice dies in a short exhale as Joe drops to one knee and buries the first third of the sword in his gut. “You took him from me,” he growls, Merrick’s hands scrabbling at his arm. Joe has not felt such rage since he watched the Crusaders burn his homelands and murder his people. Has never let it consume him like an uncontrolled wildfire. “You took him from me and it was all for _nothing_.”

He lances the blade through Merrick’s body, inch by inch in those slow seconds that he endured when he realized Nicky was not coming back to him. He watches the life leave the man and feels absolutely nothing in return.

The room is so quiet that, when Joe stands and turns to Booker, the only sounds are his shoes on the tile floor. The Frenchman’s eyes dart around the room, casing the exits, and Joe knows that he’s standing between him and every single one of them. There’s a sharp drip, drip, drip, of blood off Joe’s fingertips that still as he curls his hands into fists. “You’re the reason Nicky is dead.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen, Joe.”

“You wanted our immortality gone!” he barks, wishing he had not left the sword strung through Merrick’s chest. “Now it’s gone and Nicky is _dead_!”

“The police will be here soon,” Andy says, cutting them both off. “We need to go.” Her shirt is soaked with blood and there’s a sharp, wounded bite in her voice that is sickeningly unfamiliar. Joe looks at her desperately, craving the last drop of revenge he can find, but her resolve is firm and he knows better than to argue against her judgement. “Joe, we need to get Nicky and go.”

Part of him clings to hope. Clings to the sliver of faith that when he goes back down to that hallway, Nicky will be waiting for him. Waiting for him with those dark, wild eyes and a bright smile.

That hope, and every piece of goodness left in Joe’s heart, crumbles to dust when he sees Nicky’s fallen body right where he was left. His breath quakes and a gentle hand touches his shoulder. Nile’s umber eyes flick up to his face and she whispers, “I’m really sorry, Joe. About Nicky.” He should thank her. Should apologize for her having to come back for them, for getting captured in the first place, but nothing comes out of his mouth.

He kneels at his beloved’s side and struggles to breathe. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They’ve killed each other a hundred times over, died thousands of deaths, and none of them have ever stuck. They were supposed to have thousands of years together. Were supposed to grow so old that they could forget past lives and original deaths and exist in a thousand present moments.

Joe’s hands twist in Nicky’s blood soaked shirt and he pulls the younger man to his chest again. “Nicolò,” he chokes, burning his face and memory with that sharp familiar scent of imported cologne. Nicky’s favorite. The tears come easy this time and drown Joe in waves.

“Let me help,” a voice says and Joe turns to Booker like a viper ready to strike. “I can—”

“Don’t you dare touch him. If you touch him, Booker, I’ll—”

“Both of you stop it,” Andy says, catching Nile’s eyes and tilting her head toward Joe. “We need to go otherwise we may not get another chance.”

Joe sucks in a heaving, shaking breath through his teeth and allows Nile close enough to wrap her fingers around the back of Nicky’s knees. His stomach turns when he thinks of how many times he had crawled between those legs, kissed that tender spot behind his knee, relished that delighted gasp that never grew old, even after all these years. His body threatens to give out altogether when he remembers that he will never have that again.

Nicky’s body is colder than when Joe left him, blood cooling in his veins as they move into the elevator and down into the parking garage. There’s an old military truck and Joe clings to his love’s body as they pile in. He can feel Andy’s eyes on them from the backseat but cannot meet her gaze.

He remembers those days, those weeks, those years after they lost Quynh. Andy’s anguish, the decades of searching. The all-encompassing sense of loss.

But they were left in limbo, knowing that Quynh was still alive, still out there at the bottom of the ocean. This is different. This is final.

This is an eternity of suffering and Joe is already breaking in this first lurid and cruel moment.

“You promised you would never leave me,” he breathes into Nicky’s blood-crusted hair. “How could you abandon me like this?” He cradles Nicky’s head, cradles his open wounds, and holds back the dam of tears. He cannot grieve like this. It’s indecent and improper and Joe cannot let the rest of his team see him like this.

He loses time. It drains through him like water through sand and, still, Nicky does not wake. Joe’s heart is breaking, if it’s even left beating at all. The world grows cold and spins around the central point of his anguish. Joe prays. Prays and prays and prays for death, prays for it to be quick, so he can join his Nicolò in Paradise. He cannot be left alone like this for another thousand years.

The sky is dark when they finally stop. It’s a house he doesn’t recognize but Copley insists it’s safe. Joe doesn’t trust him but Andy does and that’s enough for the discussion to die without a word. She looks tired—they all do—as she reaches a hand out for him through the back doors of the truck. “Come on Joe. Let me help,” she hums, her other hand still pressed to her abdomen. She’s injured but she’s strong and Joe knows she’s endured enough to know where her limits are. This is not one of them. He looks at her with bloodshot eyes and can barely detangle himself from Nicky’s body long enough to let her help.

The house is silent as the grave as they move Nicky to one of the empty bedrooms off the main hall. Joe sits on the edge of the bed, silent tears rolling down his face one by one in perfect matching order, and cannot let go of his hand.

He should have gotten them rings. Nicky always promised, late at night in the dark midnight skies, that he didn’t need a ring to know how much Joe loved him. They had been married a thousand times over but it didn’t seem to matter. As long as they had each other.

“You need to eat,” Andy says from the door. He shakes his head, refusing to tear his gaze away from Nicky’s gently parted mouth. “Yusuf…” she says in a rare turn of his name.

“I won’t leave him,” he croaks, voice breaking like shards of glass. “I can’t leave him.”

Joe listens to her sigh gently and her steps retreat. His thumb traces the purpling bruises on Nicky’s knuckles and folds over, pressing his forehead to his lover’s palm. His head snaps up, frightened that someone else has come to separate them again, but it’s only Andy again. There is a large bowl of water in her hand and washcloths under her arm. Her mouth is pressed thin and their eyes meet as she comes closer. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

His hands shake as he drags the damp cloth over Nicky’s face, scrubbing the blood away as tenderly as he can. Andy has cut away the stained clothing and works silently on cleaning her fallen comrade’s arms. There is nothing they can say to each other to make this right, no words of peace she offers him. The water in the bowl runs pink then crimson as they wash the day’s devastation away as if it never existed in the first place.

“Would you do it?” Joe finally asks as the last of the rust colored stains are removed from Nicky’s perfect neck. Andy’s hands still and she looks up at him as if she already knows what he will ask of her. “If I asked you to kill me, right here, right now, would you?”

She resumes her work without acknowledgment. “No,” she mutters plainly. “We’ve already lost Nicky; I’m not losing you too.”

His face twists into a furied scowl and his fingers tighten around the cloth in his hand. “Why now?” His hands come to rest over Nicky’s sternum, one last chance that he will feel that familiar sound of a beating heart in the place where he has rest his head so many times before. “Why now, after all this time? Why did it have to be Nicky? Why couldn’t it have been me?”

Andy shakes her head and her brow knits together. They’ve been fighting side by side for long enough that he knows what she’s thinking. If she’s lost her immortality and Nicky has lost his as well, then her mind is on Quynh. Quynh, at the bottom of the ocean and the possibility that she has, after hundreds of years, finally stopped drowning. “I don’t know. I don’t why this is happening but I wish it wasn’t.” She finally looks up and meets his eyes, tired and worn from just a shred of the heartache that Joe is feeling. “Especially not to Nicky.”

Joe smoothes down a loose lock of Nicky’s damp hair and feels the back of his throat burn with held-back tears. “I used to want to see this man dead. I used to dream of being able to stand over his lifeless body and claim victory.” A sob punches out of his chest and Joe’s face crumples like crepe paper. “Now I wish I could take every death back from him.”

“There’s no going back now,” Andy says gently and he isn’t used to seeing her like this. She’s always had a reigned in stoicism that he never quite mastered, gained from thousands of years of watching the world pass her by. But this is different. She’s worried for him, worried for all of them, and yet there’s not a care for herself. “Like Nicky said, when it’s our time, it’s our time.”

The words cut sharp and an open wound inside him festers. “Don’t talk to me about what Nicky said.”

“Joe, he wouldn’t want—”

“You don’t know what Nicky would want because he’s dead!” Joe shouts, venom dripping down his chin. “He’s dead, Andy, and I couldn’t even say goodbye to him. He is gone and every bit of me has died along with him!”

He’s too angry to cry and yet the tears come nonetheless. He clutches at Nicky’s body, rage seeping from the very marrow of his bones and covering everything in darkness. There are no words in his head, just red-hot flames. He’s saved thousands of lives over the centuries but he couldn’t save Nicky and now his soul is worth nothing.

Andy doesn’t react to his outburst, only regards him carefully in that cool, calculating way of hers. She nods silently and reaches out a gentle hand to rest on Nicky’s forehead, taking one last look at him before she solemnly takes her leave.

It’s the first time since Nicky’s death that Joe has been alone with him and it’s even worse than before. He’s been holding his breath for an eternity, body tensed, lying in wait until the moment when Nicky gasps awake and grounds Joe with his touch. But it hasn’t come and Joe is dying. Slowly and surely like the wounds on his shoulders that are taking too long to heal. Joe is dying and the world still spins like nothing has happened.

Like the brightest light wasn’t just snuffed out.

The first sob comes tearing out of his throat like some demon. The second one rolls over his entire body like a wave and he collapses over his love’s body, muffling his screams of anguish into Nicky’s still-soft skin.

He’s got half a mind to find a gun, find a knife, find his sword and end it all now. Join Nicky. The idea of being left behind without his love, even with Andy and Nile, is too much to bear. “Nicolò please,” he begs in broken Italian through his heaving cries, hoping that Nicky’s native tongue reaches him wherever he is. “Please come back to me, my heart. You have to come back to me.”

His tears smear across Nicky’s cheeks as Joe presses a kiss to his sharp jaw. His body is limp in Joes arms and Nicky’s head rolls back exposing the long line of his neck. Joe has seen this so many times before, when his Nicolò would writhe and gasp underneath him, but now it sends shards into his heart, into his lungs, at the abject stillness of his body.

As much as the present is trying to destroy him, the thought of the future is even worse. He will have to bury Nicky. Have to put his body in the cold earth and never see his smiling face shine down over him. Joe has helped to bury many people before—Booker’s sons, his fellow soldiers, his mother, just years after he returned home—but burying Nicky was a hypothetical. Something that crossed his mind in fleeting thoughts and never realities.

The hours drag into eternity. He stops crying at some point and just holds Nicky’s body close to his. Nile comes with a plate of food and no words. Booker hangs back in the doorway, guilt dripping from him thick enough that Joe can feel it fill the room. Andy comes and sits next to him in silence, a bottle in her hand.

She offers him wine but Joe cannot take even that.

Her hand hovers over his shoulder. “In the morning, we’ll…” Her voice cracks and Joe looks at her wearily. There are tears in her eyes, in Nile and Booker’s, and Joe’s composure fractures again. “We’ll do right by Nicky.”

He nods and buries his face in Nicky’s neck and feels the crest of mourning come up over his head again.

Tonight, Joe is drowning.

~~~

He hasn’t slept since the few hours they got in Gouissainville and it begins to take its toll.

His hands shake and his limbs grown heavy and numb until all Joe can do sink his head into the pillow beside Nicky’s. His eyelids sag, headache throbbing in his skull from all the weeping he’s done, but he cannot bear to look away. He traces the deep inset of his lover’s eyes, the perfect curve of Nicky’s broad nose, his sharp cheekbones. He thinks of all the times they’ve made love to each other, every ballad and poem he’s written about his Nicolò.

900 years together is something others cannot even dream of.

But now, in the sharpest turn of fate, Joe finds himself craving just a little more time.

“I am so sorry, my love,” he croaks, voice having gone dry hours ago. “I am sorry I didn’t reach you in time.”

He reaches out a trembling hand for Nicky’s face one last time. One last time and he will sleep. One last time and he will begin sewing the pieces of his heart back together as best he can.

But, before he can touch the younger man again, a rattling gasp shakes the room and Joe falls back as Nicky’s eyes flash open. “Yu…Yusuf…” Nicky coughs, hands blindly fumbling as he sits up shakily.

Joe may as well be seeing a ghost. The blood drains from his face and he covers his mouth with both his hands. The world shifts on its axis as Nicky turns to him, pale eyes dazed and full of confusion. Joe wants to reassure him, wants to tell him that everything is okay now, but relief crashes through him so sharply that he can do nothing but collapse into wretched sobs.

Nicky’s arms come around him and they’ve never felt sweeter. Joe keens against his shoulder, against the beautiful warmth of his neck, as Nicky clutches him tight. “Yusuf, I am here, I am here. What’s wrong?” he whispers in his native tongue.

“You died,” Joe sobs in broken Arabic, unsure if Nicky can even make out what he’s saying. “You died and didn’t come back.” His hands brush over the healed wound at the back of Nicky’s head and is sick with the solace that it has finally closed. “I thought you were gone.”

Nicky’s fingers dig into his shirt and there’s something desperate and raw about it.

They’ve had close calls, had deaths that were more brutal and violent than this, but nothing has separated them as long as this moment. This is different and Nicky knows it. Can feel Joe’s desolation in the very marrow in his bones, the sinew in his muscles, as he smoothes his palms over Joe’s trembling body. “I’m here,” Nicky reassures and Joe can hear the catch in his voice. The insecurity. “I am here, Yusuf, I swear it to you.”

Joe catches his face in his hands and presses their foreheads together. He meets Nicky’s eyes and would gladly go blind in their shining sunlight. “You can’t leave me like that again,” he grits through clenched teeth. “You have to promise me, Nicolò.”

A gentle kiss lands underneath his worn eyelids and Joe sags into the touch. “I promise.”

“He’s alive?,” a stunned voice says from the doorway and they both turn to see Nile’s shocked face. There’s a gun in her hand, like she was the one who ran to the commotion. Joe is still shaking, still unable to let go of Nicky or come anywhere close to letting him slip away again, and Nile can barely move herself. “Guys!” she calls, raising her voice to a shout. “Nicky’s _alive_!”

There are rushing footsteps and Booker comes skidding to a stop as Nile rushes into the room. His eyes are brimming with tears of relief but the moment he sees Joe’s face, he freezes, unable to join in the unbridled joy. Nicky’s alive and Joe isn’t considering dropping him at the bottom of the sea like Quynh anymore, but there are amends he can’t yet make.

“Nicky?” Andy whispers and Joe has never seen her so elated. Even though Nile is closer, Andy reaches them first, pulling Nicky into such a tight hug that he lets out a muffled, strangled noise into her shoulder. Joe choke out a wet, teary laugh. “Don’t you fucking scare me like that again,” she says, tangling her fingers through his hair when Nicky wraps an arm around her shoulders. “Otherwise I’ll kill you again myself.”

There’s so many tears, so much talking, but Joe finds consolation in the fact that Nicky never once lets go of his hand.

“What does this mean?” Nicky asks after the world has quieted and the sun has begun its staggering ascent into the sky. “Why did this happen to me?” The four of them have piled on the bed, Booker perched on the edge of the dresser. “I have not been gone that long since…”

Joe remembers. Remembers piercing the Italian’s chest with the blade of his scimitar, watching Nicky bleed out in the dark dirt of the Holy Lands. Nicky had gurgled and choked and gasped for almost fifteen minutes and Joe had watched every suffering moment of it. He was too tired, too sick to move on to camp away from the fight, and six hours later, he had watched Nicky return to life for the first time.

It had never taken so long since that first moment.

“Maybe it means Andy’s immortal again,” Nile offers. “She wasn’t healing and you weren’t either, so maybe—”

“Hate to burst your bubble, kid,” Andy says with a shake of her head. Her fingers linger over the gauze around the fresh stitches in her abdomen. “Still lost it.”

“Does it really matter?” Joe whispers and Nicky’s hand tightens around his. “Nicky’s back, does it even fucking matter why?” The younger man turns back over his shoulder and gives him a worried look. Joe has pieced himself back together but just barely. The fractures are still there, the open wound of nearly losing Nicky still oozing. His voice shakes as he snaps, the edges beginning to fray again, “I just want to forget this ever happened.”

“If we don’t know why it happened to Nicky, it could happen to any of us,” Andy says as a frustrated tear slips from Joe’s eye. He wipes at it brusquely and knows there’s no way Nicky doesn’t notice. But Andy notices as well and sighs quietly. “I think we’re all a little rattled after this. Let’s take a couple days.”

Nile nods and stretches her legs, wincing as she changes positions. Booker offers Nicky a thin, hesitant smile and disappears from the bedroom, followed by Nile. Joe slumps into the bed, burying his face in his free hand, and allows his mask to fall. Before Nile, before Booker, it was the four of them—him, Nicky, Andy, and Quynh. They didn’t have long with Quynh, but Andy has been by their side for over nine hundred years. She knows him better then anyone aside from Nicky, and Joe can let his strength wane in front of her.

“I’m so tired, boss,” he croaks and feels the younger man’s head rest against his shoulder. “I can’t go through that again. Not with Nicky, not with you.”

“You won’t have to, my love,” Nicky promises, kissing his knuckles. “I have not left you yet.”

“Nobody’s leaving anyone, Joe. You gotta trust us on that.” He looks up at Andy and she looks just as beaten as he is. But her mouth quirks in a smile and she reaches out to tug on one of his curls. His shoulders drop in defeat and she laughs, patting his cheek. “There’s the stubborn asshole I know.” Andy hauls herself off the bed and her hand lingers on Nicky’s shoulder. “You two try and get some rest, okay?”

“We will try and stay quiet,” Nicky jokes flatly, and Joe is too spent for even that amount of levity.

His eyelids sag as the door closes and they’re so wrapped up in the black silence that Joe hasn’t even realized he’s been holding his breath. “I need a s-shower,” he stammers, crawling toward the edge of the bed. He tugs on Nicky’s fingers and begs again. “Please, Nicolò, I need—”

Nicky’s bright blue eyes meet his and it’s like watching the sky clear after a storm. His lips press thin and he nods. “I know what you need, love.”

The sound of water engulfs the en-suite bathroom as Nicky turns on the walk-in shower. Joe strips off his clothes, ignoring how much of his own blood and Nicky’s blood has clung to his skin under the fabric. His hands shake and he can’t seem to swallow the lump in his throat. There’s dirt in the grout and he can’t stop staring at it, the floor swimming around in circles. His breath hitches as Nicky pulls his jeans and underwear down over his legs. “I almost lost you,” Joe croaks.

He’s still reeling, still drowning, and he has no idea how to get his head above water.

Joe lets Nicky move him like a rag doll, pulling him into the shower and under the hot spray. He’s holding his breath again. He stares at the cut of the younger man’s clavicle, at the dip of muscle in the center of his chest, at his Nicky’s beautiful eyes. He’s holding his breath again. Water seeps into his curls and drags them down over his forehead. Nicky’s hands cup his jaw and Joe is holding his breath again.

“ _Cuore mio_ ,” Nicky whispers, and the dam breaks.

The air rushes out of his lungs all at once in a cracked sob. His face falls into Nicky’s shoulder, hands clenching at the other man’s hips and back. Nicky’s fingers trace up and down Joe’s spine in a desperate attempt to soothe him. He hasn’t cried this hard in hours, since he thought Nicky was truly and permanently dead, and Joe feels so painfully weak for letting his love see him like this.

“It’s okay,” Nicky breathes against his ear and it only makes the tears come harder. Everything burns. His mouth tastes like ash.

“You were dead.” Joe can’t get the image of Nicky’s vacant eyes out of his head. “Nicolò, you were dead.” The glassy nothingness where life was and, even though his love is living and breathing in front of him, it’s something he’s unable to shake. “You were _dead_ and I felt like I was dead alongside you.”

“It’s okay, I’m here,” Nicky repeats, their bodies slick with water. The warmth of his skin soothes Joe but only in fleeting waves, in between hitching gulps of air. “You cannot get rid of me this easily, _hayati_.”

They’re alive, Nicky is alive, but Joe has to take the proof for himself.

He turns his face and grabs handfuls of Nicky’s wet hair, forcing their mouths together. It’s not even a kiss, not really. Not with the way their lips barely meet, Joe’s face wet from saltwater and freshwater alike. They breathe the same air, the way they’ve done for centuries, and Joe’s back hits the icy tile of the shower wall. Nicky’s hands brace his face and his tongue slips into Joe’s mouth, grounding him in the touch and taste of his beloved. His knees go weak and Joe tries to find his old belief that it’s always going to be like this.

A thousand times they’ve died, but this part of living never gets old.

The water goes cold by the time Joe finds the strength to calm himself. His muscles are tight, skin prickling in stiff goosebumps as Nicky scrubs them both quickly. The dirt and grime and blood wash away and Joe isn’t quite sure if anything else remains.

He hasn’t felt this tired in hundreds of years. He can’t even remember when the last time was. Memories washed away like sand with the tide but he’s still here. Nicky’s still here. Joe stares at the dirty tiles again, slumped on the edge of the tub, and allows the younger man to comb through the tangles in his curls. The edge of Nicky’s fingernails scratch along his scalp and he sighs heavily. “Good?” Nicky hums, leaning down to kiss his forehead.

Joe nods, eyes slipping shut. “Very.”

Nicky pulls the bloodstained sheets off the bed and Joe is halfway asleep in the window ledge by the time the bed is fresh. He hasn’t bothered dressing, neither of them have, and is past the point of caring. His chest hurts and his head hurts and his eyes hurt and none of his healing abilities have even begun to touch those aches.

The room spins as Nicky pulls him down into the cotton sheets, pulling the heavy blankets over them. They’ve slept in the same way for almost five hundred years—Joe curled around Nicky, fingers intertwined—but this time is different. Nicky doesn’t turn from him, but presses their foreheads, their faces, their lips together and kisses him as Joe’s eyelids sag. “I’m here,” he whispers, his thigh slipping between Joe’s.

“I know, my love,” Joe replies, unable to stop the solitary tear of relief that pools in the inner corner of his eye. “I know.”

The sun rises bright in the sky and they slumber on, unmoved by the coming day.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to play with the idea that after one of them lost their immortality, the next death takes much longer than it should. Booker’s death took a while and Nicky’s death took even longer. Plus I loved the angsty opportunities it gave me!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the sob fest!


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